


A suitcase under each one of my eyes

by becka



Series: Wildfire [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Barebacking, Canon Compliant, First Time, Heartbreak, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, implied infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 20:33:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5512259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becka/pseuds/becka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eleanor's gone and she's not coming back, so Louis turns to Zayn for comfort (and sex). But Zayn's got problems of his own, and he's already on the edge of doing something he can't take back. Canon-compliant fic set in February and March of 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A suitcase under each one of my eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Em for talking this through with me from the beginning, and Ginny and Lucy for reading it at the end. I put a lot of feelings into this fic. <33
> 
> Title from the Wombats.

They talk a lot. They talk so much it feels like everything else is getting pushed out by words, and by the time Eleanor says, “So I guess that’s it then,” Louis has almost convinced himself he’s all right. He’s not falling apart, he’s not crying, and he can hug her in the car at the airport and say, “I’ll phone in a couple of weeks.”

But then she’s gone, and she’s not coming back, and it’s a little bit like all the air is sucked out of the car. He wants a cigarette, or better yet a joint, and he texts Zayn with shaky hands. _Fancy a spot of relaxation?_

Zayn doesn’t text back, so Louis pounds on his door when he gets back to the hotel, knocking until his knuckles hurt and Preston rolls his eyes and gives him the key. Zayn’s dead asleep with his earbuds in, and Louis kicks off his shoes before crawling in next to him. It’s not what he would usually do, but this is isn’t usual.

His jostling with the duvet gets Zayn to slit one eye open and pull one of his earbuds out. “Y’alright?” he asks.

Louis’s “fine” sticks in his throat so hard that he just plants his face in the side of Zayn’s neck and hitches an unsteady breath. Zayn wraps an arm around him and holds him close with wiry strength. He smells like old smoke, and his body is warm from sleep, and Louis lets himself be held until he can breathe again. “Me and Eleanor are over,” he says quietly.

Zayn doesn’t look shocked, just sad. “I’m sorry, mate.” Maybe no one will even be surprised that this was a goodbye visit; maybe that’s why they were left alone with such ease. Louis doesn’t want to think about everyone else knowing. They’d agreed to wait a month to make it public, give them both time to prepare for a tide of abuse, but the band needs to know before that, and Louis’s mum. Zayn presses a dry kiss to his temple, and Louis closes his eyes.

“It’s too hard,” he says, and Zayn nods. Of anyone in the world, he’s sure Zayn understands that. Louis doesn’t have to say another word.

 

Zayn can make smoke rings, and Louis is almost insanely jealous. He watches the puff and pull of Zayn’s mouth, the flicker of his tongue as he licks his lips after. “Bullshit,” says Louis, snatching back the joint. “It’s not possible.”

Zayn grins, stoned and slow. “I just did it though, mate.”

“Maybe you’re not possible either.” Louis takes a deep pull on the joint, holds in the smoke for a long moment, until his tongue feels dry.

Zayn laughs. “Sometimes I think I’m not.”

“Lots of impossible things happening all the time.” Louis folds his legs up tighter in front of him. Eleanor comes into his mind again, and he doesn’t want to think of her, shakes his head as if he can dislodge her. It was never supposed to be like this. “Sometimes it’s just shit. Impossibly shit.”

Zayn nods. “Do you ever think about just, like, calling it off? Fucking off home and letting it all go?”

Louis has thought about the band crashing and burning, but he can’t really fathom choosing to leave. “What would we do then?”

“Just like, chill out, whatever we like. Can you imagine, like, setting your own schedule? Only making music when you wanted? None of this recording on the bus, or, like, people giving you shit if you don’t want to talk to them in McDonalds.”

“Don’t think that’d go away though.”

“Depends where you go, doesn’t it?”

Louis pinches out the joint since it’s just hanging between his fingers, wasting good weed. “Where would we go then?”

“I’d like to go someplace really far. Like Fiji or somewhere. Or one of the Pacific Islands with no resorts or anything. Just really far away.”

It would be so fucking good to get out from under things right now. No matter how much he tells himself they’ve got a proper break in a month, a month seems like a fucking lifetime.

Maybe it’s inevitable that he and Zayn start fucking around again, that when it comes down to it, Louis needs someone to touch his dick, and Zayn likes doing just that. It’s stupid, as well, since he’s had a long-distance girlfriend for bloody years and never felt the kind of restless ache he does now. But Louis can’t help falling into a routine of getting high with Zayn and getting off before either of them are too stoned to get it up. At first it’s just handies in hotel rooms, but then Zayn ups the ante, rolling over to suck Louis’s cock on their last night in Osaka. Louis watches the flutter of his endless eyelashes with awe as he takes Louis’s cock all the way to the back of his throat.

Practiced, that’s what it is. Louis can tell immediately that Zayn’s done this before and more than once. But never in their history has Zayn offered the glorious gift of his mouth, and Louis’s been more than content with a wank, never knowing what he was missing. He skids his fingers along the shaved side of Zayn’s head before tangling them in his hair, and Zayn looks up with his mouth full of Louis’s dick. Louis doesn’t last long at all, given the circumstances, and although he tries to be polite and hold out, he ends up giving Zayn a mouthful of come with nothing but a garbled warning. Zayn slides up the bed to kiss him after, tongue salty and bitter, lips swollen from circling Louis’s cock. Louis kisses back helplessly, thoughts racing in his head. He reaches down for Zayn’s cock, working it with quick even strokes, getting Zayn off the usual way while Zayn bites at his mouth.

“Does Perrie know you’re blowing me now?” asks Louis, pulling away so their noses touch.

Zayn’s eyes open sleepy and slow. “Yeah, mate, she’s on speakerphone right now,” he says with a laugh. “You never cared if she knew I was touching your dick.”

“Different though, isn’t it?” Wanking with a mate is just wanking still, and he’d let Eleanor know he got that sort of release with Zayn sometimes. But Zayn’s mouth on his dick is something else.

“No different to me,” Zayn tells him. “Nothing she needs to worry about.”

 

They come off stage babbling and laughing like usual, and it’s still a brilliant high, even if underneath Louis’s feeling a little bit shit. Zayn slings an arm around his shoulders backstage, still sweaty and tense from the show, their bodies sticking. He’s quiet, and he’s always been quiet, but it’s more and more now, like he just gets lost in himself after the shows. Louis doesn’t even try to fight it, the way Zayn draws him in. “Think I could suck you off before anyone herds us out of here?” Zayn asks into the side of Louis’s neck, and Louis loses his breath. That’s so much different than smoking up and getting off, but he doesn’t even think about saying no.

Back at the hotel, he goes up with Zayn, and no one thinks anything of it. He’s still a little tingly from orgasm, but it’s done nothing to calm him down or ease the rush of the show. He fidgets with his phone in the lift, Zayn looking smug beside him. They both shuffle into Zayn’s room, and Louis’s at a sudden loss for what to do next. He’s never thought about whether he needs to be high to touch Zayn’s dick, but he’s never done it completely sober either.

“Has anyone ever fucked your thighs?” Zayn asks, tossing Louis a bottle of water from the mini-fridge.

Louis fumbles the catch. “Has anyone ever done what to my thighs exactly?”

Zayn laughs. “Stuck their dick in between them to get off,” he explains.

Louis doesn’t say he’d never done more than wanking with a boy before last week. He thought Zayn knew that, but apparently Zayn’s got loads of experience Louis didn’t know about either. “No,” says Louis, feeling out of his depth. “Did you want to though? I reckon I owe you.”

Zayn’s eyes dip down and he licks his lips. Louis feels hot all over, turned on and desperate to prove himself. He and Zayn have always understood each other in a wordless, easy way, but in the past couple weeks, he’s always been on the back foot, just trying to keep up with the tangle of Zayn’s thoughts. Zayn doesn’t answer him now, just steps forward and kisses him, slow and deep. Louis puts a hand on his waist and lets it happen. He’s been out of the game for years now, but all this feels like being seduced, courted, proper date stuff.

It’s worse when Zayn finally gets in between Louis’s thighs, working himself in the lubed up mess he’s made of them. The tip of his dick keeps nudging Louis’s balls, and Louis squeezes tightly around him, making Zayn groan. He looks down at Louis with dark, heavy lidded eyes, and it’s like fucking, being fucked, pinned under Zayn’s gaze. Louis starts getting hard again almost immediately, can’t even get a hand on his dick while Zayn’s moving on top of him, taking up all his attention.

Zayn catches Louis’s mouth in a kiss, and Louis makes a helpless little noise, opening to his tongue. Everything is hot and slick between his legs now, and Zayn’s hips hitch in tight little circles as he starts to come. Louis shuts his eyes and arches his hips, trying to get some friction on his neglected dick. But he barely needs it. As soon as Zayn rolls off him, Louis gives himself two quick tugs and comes too.

“Wanna smoke?” Zayn asks, blinking slowly.

Louis swipes a hand through the mess on his thigh. “Wanna shower.”

“Hotbox the bathroom and we can do both.”

Louis grins. “Sick.”

Zayn gets all solemn and quiet though, sitting on the bathroom floor in his pants, smoke lingering around their heads as he sucks at the stub of a joint. Louis’s leaning back against the giant bathtub, resisting the urge to climb into it, and he just watches Zayn’s face fall and fall, go dark and sad like it does lately, when they’re alone.

“Thinking about Fiji?” Louis asks. It’s like code, shorthand for the itch to get far away from their real lives.

“Thinking about home,” Zayn replies. “Sometimes I think, like, home would be far enough away.”

Louis knows that’s not true, knows they’ll always find you at home eventually, that every way you manage to hide is just ammunition for someone to come looking for you. “We’ll get to go home soon,” Louis says consolingly. He’s fucking dreading going home, dreading the impulse to drive to London and beg Eleanor to take him back. They both knew it was the right thing, but Louis feels hollowed out now, an ache in his chest he can distract himself from but not cure.

“Doesn’t feel soon enough.” Zayn shakes his head. “I don’t know, man. I’m just, like. I don’t know.”

Louis nudges his shoulder into Zayn’s. He thinks he gets it, the way tour can eat you up sometimes, and he lets Zayn lean into him, quiet and still until the smoke starts to clear.

 

Zayn’s mic cuts out partway through a verse the next night, and although he grabs Harry’s without missing more than a line, he spends the rest of the show looking tense and distant, twisting himself up in his head where nothing any of them can say will get to him.

“Wanna go smoke?” Louis asks in the car back to the hotel.

Zayn shakes his head. “Nah, bro, I’m just gonna.” He makes a vague gesture that might mean “go to bed” or “call Perrie” or anything else. Louis curls an arm around his shoulders and squeezes.

“You were brilliant, mate,” Louis tells him. “Don’t beat yourself up.”

Zayn flashes him a quick, half-hearted smile.

Louis gets ready for bed back at the hotel, showers and cleans his teeth and puts on clean boxers and checks his email. He’s about to turn off the light when Zayn knocks. It’s quiet but firm, the sound at the door, and when Louis opens it, Zayn’s stood there smelling like cigarettes and looking sad and exhausted. Louis steps back from the door to let him in, and Zayn says nothing as Louis digs out his stash from the mess of his bag and rolls a joint. He lights it and hands it over, and Zayn takes a greedy drag.

“I just don’t know if I can keep on doing this,” he says. “Every fucking night, singing the same songs, everybody in the world just waiting to pick it apart.”

Louis shakes his head, holding the joint between his fingers for a long moment. “They love us, mate. They love you. All those little girls wouldn’t care if you came out on stage and just fucking stood there scratching your arse for 90 minutes.”

“And there’d still be a story in the Sun next day about how I don’t care, and I don’t do anything.” Zayn shrugs, folds up tighter on the sofa. “And maybe they’re right.”

“They’re not though. You’re a brilliant singer.”

“Not sure it matters,” he says, beckoning Louis to pass him the spliff. “Sometimes I think, like, none of this matters. It’s all just, like, made up around us. I don’t even like most of these fucking songs, but everything has to seem like it’s great all the time.”

Louis thinks about the fact that he has to have a promo plan and involve their publicist just to break up with his girlfriend, and he can’t argue. He tucks an arm around Zayn’s shoulders instead, but Zayn’s strung tight, doesn’t relax into him. “It’s a shit job sometimes,” Louis says.

“Yeah,” agrees Zayn. “Dunno why we do it sometimes, that’s all.” He pinches out the joint and presses his smoky mouth to Louis’s. Louis is too startled to react for a moment. He’s not even stoned, not enough to matter, but it seems like Zayn’s done looking for excuses. And Louis doesn’t mind it now, feeling untethered without Eleanor, unsure who he’s supposed to be with no girlfriend grounding him. He deepens the kiss, swiping his tongue over Zayn’s and cupping a hand around the back of Zayn’s neck.

When Zayn pulls away, his mouth is flushed dark and his eyes are heavy lidded. Louis’s whole body tingles with expectation. “I’d like a bit more of that, if I’m honest,” Zayn says. He’s leant awkwardly over the arm of his chair, and Louis’s eyes drift to the bed, wide open and available. He inclines his head that way, and Zayn grins.

Louis dives headfirst onto the bed, but before he can turn over, Zayn’s set a cool hand in the middle of his back. “Your arse is really quite something, mate,” he says, fingers tickling under the hem of Louis’s top.

“So I’ve been told,” says Louis. He’d normally just consider it banter, but after the thigh fucking he’s got no idea what else Zayn might be wanting to do to him. He tries to relax into the skim of Zayn’s fingers along his spine, down to the waist of his trackies, but his dick is twitching against the mattress.

“Has anybody ever eaten you out, Lou?” Zayn asks.

Louis takes a breath, hesitating. “Not that I remember,” he says inanely.

Zayn laughs. “I think you’d remember.” Zayn slides an open palm down to cup Louis’s arse, and Louis does his best not to squirm. It’s pretty hard to leave him speechless, but he honestly doesn’t know what to say to a mate who wants to stick his tongue in there. He doesn’t understand what’s gotten into Zayn, what was wrong with getting high and wanking together. They had a good system.

Zayn just gropes at his bum for a while, and Louis keeps telling himself he’ll just roll over and they’ll do this normally, but it feels nice, Zayn’s hand on him, Zayn’s fingers dipping down under his trackies and spreading along his crack. When Zayn rubs a fingertip over his arsehole, Louis sighs out, “Go on then.” His heartbeat is loud in his ears, but the alternative is telling Zayn no, and Louis doesn’t want him to leave, not when he came in here feeling like shit in the first place.

After a moment, Zayn leans down and presses a kiss to the back of Louis’s neck, breath hot there, and Louis tries not to tense as Zayn’s body settles against his. Zayn’s fingers are still stroking over his arsehole, and El had given him a cheeky finger a time or two whilst giving head, but nothing like this focused, tender pressure. Zayn is just getting him used to the idea, and Louis knows that, that this is just a first step. “Alright?” Zayn asks, nuzzling at the back of Louis’s neck, lips grazing just below his hairline before sneaking down nearly to his collar.

“Fine,” Louis replies, shaky and too high, and Zayn gives a little laugh. It’s so nice to hear him enjoying something instead of just looking sad or angry that Louis lets him keep going, lets Zayn’s first finger begin to coax him open. It’s weird, but it’s manageable like this, Zayn just touching him slowly, Louis’s body feeling tender and eager in spite of the weird worry swirling in his belly.

“Can you get this off?” Zayn asks, pulling at the collar of Louis’s t-shirt.

Louis does it, gives Zayn access to so much more of his skin, and Zayn drags his free hand down the sweep of Louis’s spine. Louis is holding his breath now, just waiting for the next strange thing Zayn will do to him.

Zayn nuzzles his face between Louis’s shoulder blades, pressing slow, open-mouthed kisses there, and Louis doesn’t know a lot about getting off with your mates, but he didn’t think it was supposed to be like this, gentle and slow and intent. Zayn’s tongue traces along the groove of his spine, and Louis’s dick is aching, his whole body tense.

“Relax, babe,” says Zayn, in a voice Louis barely recognizes, and he realises it must be the voice Zayn uses when he’s on the pull, with the girls Louis always just hopes Perrie knows about. Zayn cups his arse in both hands and spreads him open, thumbs stroking at Louis’s hole, and Louis can’t relax, can’t breathe through the strangeness of it, of feeling like one of Zayn’s hookups. 

“It’ll feel good,” Zayn promises, and then his tongue is there, flickering over the tight centre of Louis’s hole, gentle and wet. Louis doesn’t get it, at first, how this light, ticklish sensation is supposed to be something he wants. And then Zayn spreads him wider, licks deeper into him, and Louis moans his shock into the pillow. It’s so much, suddenly, like he’s being pulled apart by the slick strokes of Zayn’s tongue, the greedy focus of Zayn’s mouth.

Louis flexes his fingers against the bed, torn between reaching for his dick and the embarrassing knowledge that it’ll be over almost as soon as he does. Zayn’s mouth slides down for a moment and he sucks at the hanging weight of Louis’s balls before going back to Louis’s hole. Louis sucks in wet, ragged breaths and struggles not to move when everything in him is aching for more. He didn’t know his arse could feel like this, every nerve lit up and singing as Zayn’s tongue works him open.

“It’s good, right?” Zayn asks, circling his thumb against Louis’s taint and adding a whole new layer of startling sensation.

“Yeah,” Louis whispers. He cups a hand around his dick, barely touching it, but even still, he’s so close.

Zayn mouths at him gently again, tongue finding its way into the clutch of his arsehole and swirling there, one surprisingly strong hand keeping him spread. Louis works his hips in helpless little circles and gives his dick a few frantic strokes before it’s over and he’s coming harder than he remembers coming before, maybe ever. Zayn doesn’t stop then, keeps his tongue right up against Louis’s arsehole, licking straight into the centre of him where he’s almost too sensitive.

He doesn’t know what Zayn’s going to do next, and when he looks again, Zayn’s barely touching himself, just staring at Louis, who feels laid out like a human sacrifice. “Can I come on you, babe?” Zayn asks, holding his dick loosely in one hand, the slick pink head tilted toward the spread of Louis’s arse.

Louis nods faintly, and Zayn settles on top of him, lines their bodies up so his dick is settled right in Louis’s crack, rubbing against Louis’s tender hole. He wonders if Zayn’s going to fuck him like this, slip inside him with no warning while he’s licked loose and aching, but Zayn seems content to just rut into him, working himself against Louis’s arsehole until Louis’s dick starts to rise again. It’s breath-taking and nearly painful, the way his body lights up for this.

When Zayn comes, he rolls off Louis’s back, leaving cooling streaks of jizz between Louis’s arsecheeks and down over his thighs. Louis rubs his face against the pillow and doesn’t look up. His dick is half-hard but not past the point where a cold shower won’t get it down. “Need a wash,” he says, and stumbles toward the bathroom. Part of him hopes Zayn will be gone when he gets back, but Zayn’s in Louis’s bed checking his phone, a handful of tissues on the table beside the bed showing where he wiped himself down. Louis slips into bed beside him because he can’t think what else to do.

Zayn’s smile is sleepy and slow, and Louis likes that at least one of them’s happy now. Zayn’s not thinking about his mic cutting out, and Louis had spent a few blissful minutes not thinking about Eleanor. “Do you want a cuddle?” Zayn says, sliding his phone onto the bedside table and uncurling the arm he had tucked behind his head.

Louis settles his head gratefully on Zayn’s shoulder. He’s twitchy and not ready to sleep, but Zayn’s arm gets heavier and heavier around his shoulders until it’s obvious Zayn’s not having that problem. Louis stares at the ceiling for a while and wonders how much longer all this turmoil can last.

 

It gets worse though, is the thing. Louis starts to feel as though everything that happens on this tour is just another thing to set Zayn on edge. And as the date approaches when Louis’s agreed to tell the world about him and Eleanor, it’s more and more like a train on a track set to run him down. He goes out more, with Zayn and with Liam, tries out the nightlife of every city they pass through. It had been getting easier to just not think about her, but now it hits him all over again that she’s never coming back.

They’re down at the hotel pool one day, watching these girls swimming and pretending they don’t notice the looks they’re getting right back. Louis’s been having sex with Zayn and only Zayn for a couple of weeks, and there’s a part of him that realises he’s single now and should expand his horizons. But it’s not until Zayn says, “Hey mate, why don’t go say hello?” that Louis actually does anything about it.

He slips into the pool and does a couple of laps end to end before breaking off to chat. It’s pretty clear which one of the girls is more interested, and he turns on the charm hard as he can, making her laugh and leaning into her when she does. Subtle, he thinks, cool. And all the while he can feel Zayn’s eyes on him, appraising.

He’s up on his toes a bit when she kisses him, but he follows her lead, standing as straight as he can and putting a hand on her waist. Her mouth is soft and open under his, and Louis kneads his fingers into her skin, but all he can think of is Zayn watching, probably critiquing his performance. Behind his closed eyes is the imprint of Zayn’s satisfied little smirk. He pulls away and grins at the girl, knows he could take her up to his room, just tilt his head towards the door, really, and she’d follow. But his toes are starting to cramp from the way he’s standing on the sloping pool bottom, and he feels out of his depth in more ways than one. He’s never had a one-night stand, never had the sort of sex where you aren’t at least mates after.

“I’ve got to get back indoors, love,” Louis tells her. “Business to attend to.” It’s an absolute lie, but it sounds important and she doesn’t even question it. He adjusts himself a bit as he walks back towards the door. Now that he’s said he’s going inside, he can’t just stroll over to Zayn, bum a fag, and sunbathe for another hour or two.

Zayn comes knocking on Louis’s door about fifteen minutes later, just long enough that Louis’s had time to rinse off and slip into a pair of boxers. “Did you not like her then?” Zayn asks, sprawling out on Louis’s bed in a vest and his swim shorts, heat still radiating off his skin. “It looked as though the two of you were getting along just great.”

Louis can’t say to Zayn, _I couldn’t get you out of my head, mate, so I had to stop_ , but he can’t think of anything else to say either, so he just shrugs.

Zayn gives him a long, appraising look. “Is it because of El? It’s okay if it is. It’s like, you put a lot out there. If you don’t want to get off with another girl, that’s all right.”

“I fucking know it’s all right,” Louis snaps. “But I’m fine. I’ve fucked around with you enough, haven’t I?”

“It’s different,” says Zayn, and Louis drops his gaze because that’s perfectly true. “Lou, you know I’ll always be your friend, right? No matter what happens, like, we’re tight, you and me.”

“Yeah,” says Louis. He flops down next to Zayn on the bed, breathing in the scent of sun cream and sweat and remembering the pool at judges’ houses, the first moment Louis knew he and Zayn were going to be proper mates. It seems like a million years ago. “Are you feeling any better about things?” Louis asks. “With the break coming?”

Zayn tenses, shakes his head. “Don’t want to talk about it,” he says stiffly, and Louis’s stomach twists. Of course there have always been times when Zayn didn’t want to talk, but he feels more distant every day lately, like he’s being eaten up from the inside out. He’s getting through every night on stage, but when Louis catches his eye, Zayn won’t hold his gaze for long. 

“What do you want to do?” Louis asks, remembering the girl in the pool, the way all his thoughts hung on Zayn as he kissed her.

Zayn gives him a wicked grin and brings their mouths together, guiding Louis with a hand scooped round the back of his neck. Louis’s lips part, taking the kiss from rough and dry to deep and wet. He grabs a handful of Zayn’s loose vest, pulling him in until Zayn’s half on top of him. It’s driving him crazy, wanting more and more of Zayn all the time, wanting to give him something back too.

There’s no hiding his erection, which pushes obscenely at the front of his pants, cradled in the curve of Zayn’s hip bone. He gets hard so fast like this, and he can feel the answering weight of Zayn’s cock dragging along his thigh. Louis works his hips a little, but it’s aimless, testing out a solution to something that isn’t quite a problem yet. He likes Zayn’s weight on top of him as they kiss, the way Zayn’s hips pin him for his hungry mouth. He slips an arm around Zayn’s waist, holding onto him, one hand siting flat against his lower back where his his top has ridden up.

Zayn looks at him solemnly the next time he breaks the kiss to come up for air. They’re nose to nose, and Louis tries to keep from staring at the smudged pink of his mouth. “I want to fuck you,” Zayn says quietly, little more than a breath against Louis’s open mouth.

Louis’s breath catches, but it also feels inevitable, like this was always where they were headed the minute they moved on from stoned handjobs after a show. “Okay,” he says, although he’s not sure that’s something he wants.

Zayn must see his uncertainty because he nuzzles their noses together, and his expression is gentle as he says, “We don’t have to, mate.”

Louis shakes his head. Everything is a mess, and he’s a mess, but he can at least be what Zayn needs just now. “I can take it,” Louis says with a wink, braver than he feels. His heart seems to stutter in his chest as Zayn kisses him slowly again, and he wonders if he’s giving too much away. He tugs at Zayn’s vest, breaking the kiss to get it off him. Zayn takes the hint and shimmies out of his shorts next, hard belly and narrow hips leading down to the thick jut of his cock. Louis didn’t even think he liked dick much, but he likes this, watching Zayn want him.

The lube is in the drawer beside the bed now, instead of out of reach in the bathroom, and Zayn wastes no time in getting at his bum, tickling a finger down Louis’s crack into the smooth grip of his hole. Louis shuts his eyes, tilting his head back on the pillow, Zayn’s fingertip slicking him, finding a way in. Louis lets his thighs hang open, gives Zayn the space he needs to reach between, but he doesn’t try to move yet. He’s not sure how he’s supposed to feel, even after curling a finger into himself sometimes when he wanks, getting used the thought that he might want this. Zayn drizzles lube down Louis’s crack to get his first finger all the way inside, knuckles brushing at the rim of Louis’s hole.

Zayn fucks him on that one finger for ages, until Louis is quietly desperate for more, feeling loose and slick around Zayn’s finger, his hips moving in time with Zayn’s thrusts. As Zayn looks down at him with lazy, half-lidded eyes, Louis wonders if he’ll come like this, if he could possibly need more than what Zayn’s giving him right now. When Zayn finally tries him out on two fingers, he’s so wet that he just wants more. Louis feels eager and greedy, arching onto Zayn’s hand as Zayn moves steadily inside him.

“Why didn’t you say how much you liked this? You’ve been playing hard to get on me.” Zayn kisses the corner of his mouth, taking the bite out of the words, turning it playful.

Louis shakes his head. He can’t explain that he hadn’t known he liked it, that this is all new to him too. “Don’t think I’m so hard to get, honestly,” he says instead, nudging his mouth against Zayn’s, and feeling Zayn’s smirk more than seeing it. Zayn’s fingers twist inside him and Louis groans, clenching tight on Zayn’s knuckles. His dick is stiff against his belly, and his balls are tight with how much he wants to let go.

“Have you got a condom?” Zayn asks, thumbing at the sensitive spot behind Louis’s balls, rubbing it in slow precise circles. How can he know so much about Louis’s body?

Louis takes a deep breath to refocus on the question. “Haven’t needed any in a while.”

“No wonder you didn’t want to bring that girl from the pool up. What would you have done with her?”

“Eaten her out,” Louis answers honestly.

Zayn can’t find fault with that answer. “I haven’t got any on me. Do you want to chill while I run to my room?”

Louis can’t imagine lying here with his arse wide open while Zayn runs down the corridor for condoms. “Can we skip it?” Louis asks. He’s doing one irresponsible thing tonight, so why not add onto the list?

“You mean, just go without one?” It’s the first time Louis feels like he’s genuinely surprised Zayn, but then Zayn pulls his fingers out of Louis’s arse with a slick sound, and Louis flinches at the emptiness. “I haven’t, like. I don’t do that.”

“Ever?”

“Well, with Perrie, obviously, since she’s on the pill and everything. But not, like, people on tour.”

“That what I am to you then? A groupie?” Louis bats his eyelashes as though this is a ridiculous thought, although there’s a part of him that can’t help but believe it.

Zayn laughs like that hadn’t even occurred to him, which is comforting. “You really want it without a condom? It’ll be messy.”

“Don’t want to wait for you to go wandering off to get one.” His desperation has eased a little, but he’s sharply aware of the space inside him where Zayn’s fingers have been, and he wants it filled up again.

“Okay,” says Zayn, and kisses him, deep and slow, like Louis might need seducing, like Louis might not be so easy for this.

When Zayn starts fucking him again, it’s with three fingers, stretching Louis’s arsehole right out. It aches, but Louis wants that ache, rocking down into it. “Get on with it,” he whispers, snagging Zayn’s lower lip with his teeth.

This time when Zayn pulls his fingers out, Louis gasps, his whole body protesting the feeling. But then Zayn’s dragging the head of his cock right down the deep split of Louis’s arse and finally, finally pressing it into him. It’s different from his fingers, a smoother slide, and Zayn grabs Louis’s hips to keep him still on that first deep thrust. Zayn’s cock rubs up against every sensitive spot inside him, and Louis thinks he might cry with how good it is, how full he feels when Zayn gets in as deep as he can.

Zayn palms at the back of Louis’s thigh, urging it up around his waist, and Louis moans as this changes the angle of Zayn’s cock inside him. “Are you good?” Zayn asks, looking at him with dark, depthless eyes.

Louis nods, wants to find some other way to touch him, some other point of connection as Zayn’s cock takes him apart. He touches Zayn’s cheek, tracing down to the fine edge of his jaw. Zayn takes the hint and leans down to kiss him, slow and lazy and hot. He hitches Louis’s hips up, and Louis lets himself be moved so that Zayn can nail even deeper into him on his next thrust.

Zayn just circles his hips for a minute, once he’s got all the way in and his hips are sitting flush against Louis’s arse. Louis’s dick is aching hard, laid across his belly, and he can hear himself whimpering as Zayn’s cock hits him just right. “Speed it up a bit, yeah?” Louis tells him breathlessly, and Zayn grins wickedly down at him.

His cock drags almost all the way out of Louis’s arse this time before sliding back in, pulling the heavy weight of it across Louis’s sensitive rim. Louis starts to work his hips in clumsy counterpoint as Zayn fucks him, and Zayn groans and palms at Louis’s dick, sliding a hand over it. Louis tenses his thighs around Zayn’s, knowing even the lightest touch might set him off right now.

“Fuck,” whispers Zayn. “You’re so fucking tight. How are you doing this without hurting yourself?” And Louis can’t tell Zayn he’s never had a cock up his arse before, that he’s tight because Zayn’s breaking him open with every thrust. Instead he just tips his head back against the pillow, lets Zayn plow into him as hard as he likes. Zayn can go on thinking he’s just brilliant at sex, and Louis will do his best to live up to that. It does hurt still, a little, but every second the pain is easing.

Zayn presses distracted kisses to the base of Louis’s throat and the fluttering pulse beneath his chin, and Louis bends his head to better accept Zayn’s mouth in those places. There’s a part of him that wants Zayn to bite, leave a mark on his skin that he can touch to remember this, remember the way it aches and how full he feels as Zayn moves in him. But no marks was the rule with Eleanor, and it certainly needs to be the rule now. He doesn’t want anyone asking questions about this, not when Louis has only the barest idea what he’s doing.

They move together in a building rhythm and Louis feels himself getting lost in it, working himself on Zayn’s dick until there’s barely anything left of him at all. He might cry, sliding along this sharp edge of sensation, thighs clenching as he starts to come in the gentle cup of Zayn’s palm.

Zayn gives a pleased little hum. “That’s it, babe. Feels so good in you.”

Louis shuts his eyes, the high of orgasm tempered by the creeping thought that that’s probably the sort of shit Zayn says to girls on tour as well.

Then Zayn’s thrusts stutter and his fingers dig into Louis’s thigh. “Fuck, Lou,” he whispers. “Should I pull out?”

The clutch of Zayn’s fingers tells Louis he doesn’t want to, and Louis can give him that. He’s already a slick mess inside, so sensitive around Zayn’s cock. Louis shakes his head.

When Zayn comes, he groans and dips his head to mouth at the side of Louis’s neck, going shaky all over. Louis can feel it, hot and thick inside him, and it’s so gross, but he likes it a bit. He wouldn’t mind having this again. He rubs his cheek against the pillow and waits with his eyes closed for whatever will happen next.

Zayn pulls out of him, gently, and that may be the worst part, the tender ache that leaves behind, the wet slither of come between his cheeks. Louis can’t help the hurting little noise he makes as it happens, and he can’t look at Zayn when he feels so broken open. He should wash as well, instead of just lying here, and he tells himself he’ll move any second, but then Zayn flops down half on top of him, head in the curve of Louis’s neck, one bony shoulder against Louis’s sternum. Louis settles a hand in the centre of his back, thumb in the groove of Zayn’s spine. He feels as though he’s sinking deeper into the mattress every second, and he’s nearly submerged in sleep when Zayn speaks.

“I think I need to go,” Zayn says quietly.

“Nap first,” Louis tells him. “There’s nowhere to be.” It’s the most he can ask, a little while longer with Zayn in his arms.

“No. I mean, like, not this right now. The tour. I think I need to go home, sort my head out.”

“My arse is that life-changing, is it?” Louis tries to make it light, but his voice sounds shrill even in his own head.

“Best one in the business,” Zayn says, with a hasty smile. “Anybody’d want a piece of that.”

Louis is quiet for a moment before he decides he might as well say it. “Will you come back?”

Zayn rolls his head a little in the space between Louis’s ear and the pillow. It might be a nod or a denial. “I hope so,” says Zayn. “Like, I think if I just get out a bit, I’ll want to get back in. But I don’t know. I don’t know how to know. My head’s just not in it. And my heart’s not. I don’t know what it would feel like, to be better. It might not get better.”

Louis’s whole body is caught between sympathy, sadness, and bubbling anger. “So a goodbye shag and then you’ll go?” He doesn’t want to feel like Zayn is unmooring his heart in his chest, cutting it out to take it with him, but there’s nothing he can do to stop the painful tugging behind his ribs. “Wouldn’t one of the girls by the pool have been better?”

“Stop,” says Zayn, pinching at Louis’s nipple. “It’s not like that.”

“Then you could have told me before you fucked me. You didn’t have to wait until I was…” Louis doesn’t know how to finish the thought: _vulnerable_ , _in love with you_. He doesn’t think he could tell Zayn that’s how he feels.

Zayn sighs. He looks so tired suddenly, whittled down to nearly nothing. “I just don’t know what the fuck I’m doing anymore. I don’t know what the fucking point is.”

For the last couple of months, Louis’s thought the point was holding each other up, taking care of each other until everything felt less like it was falling apart. Louis thought he could’ve lived with that, everything else about the band aside. He could’ve waited everything out with Zayn. “You’ll be back though?” he says in a voice that’s too small to hide his need. “And you’ll phone while you’re gone?”

“I’ll phone all the time,” Zayn promises. “Where would you be without me, eh?” He settles himself on Louis’s chest, and Louis manages not to cry until Zayn’s breathing evens into a soft snore.

 

[one week later]

The fact is Zayn doesn’t phone until he gets them all on speaker to say he’s not coming back. Louis wonders if he knew exactly what he was doing when he left, and he bites at the inside of his lip just to keep from screaming. The other boys are leaning forward, worried, upset, asking what happened, what changed, what they can do, but Louis folds his arms across his chest and stares at the wall. Fuck Zayn then. (Except that he already did that.)

“We’ll phone you back, alright, mate?” says Liam. “Everyone’s upset, but we want to talk to you, okay?” He ends the call and looks around. Harry is teary and Niall is gnawing at a ragged fingernail. When he meets Louis’s eyes, Louis looks away.

“Did you know about this, Lou?” Liam asks quietly.

“Fuck off,” replies Louis.

“If you did you can say,” Liam continues, coaxing like Louis is a dangerous animal. “We’ve all noticed you and Zayn going off together lately. He probably told you more about how he was feeling. And it’s not, like, betraying him or anything to tell us now. If he needs our help.”

Louis doesn’t know what Zayn needs. He’s fairly sure he never did at this point. He gave Zayn too much of himself, and now he’s fucking gone, and whatever that means to the rest of them, Louis can’t even begin to explain how it is for him. “He wasn’t happy. So he left. It’s quite straightforward, Liam.”

“Why now?” asks Niall. He’s got his eyes trained steadily on Louis, and it’s terrifying that sweet Niall holds this inside him all the time, this sharp, unemotional focus. “He could have waited.”

“I guess he disagreed with you there,” says Louis. Liam had told Zayn they’d phone back, and the assortment of management and PR staff hovering at the edges of the room are undoubtedly waiting for that to happen before they offer their soothing words and new plans. But Louis is already so fucking done. He stares at his hands in his lap for a minute, counting breaths to see if the trapped, desperate feeling in his chest passes, and then he stands and walks out without another word. If Zayn can desert them all and phone in with the decision already made, they can have whatever heart-to-heart they want right now with Louis somewhere bloody else.

He’s glad they’re in a hotel and not a venue or something, so the obvious plan of escape ends him up facedown in his hotel bed, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes as he takes deep, painful breaths. There’s no one to see him and he put the chain on the door when he came in, so it’ll take power tools to get him out again before he’s ready to come. All he can think in the ringing solitude of his own head is that he’s more gullible than any of the girls Zayn’s pulled over the years; he let Zayn lie to him for so much longer than any of them ever did.

 

[one month later]

Louis’s phone rings while he’s sourly contemplating getting out of bed, and his heart jolts at the sight of Zayn’s number, like it must be some kind of joke. Zayn never phones, never likes to phone, and certainly shouldn’t be phoning now. Louis still feels ill from seeing the first message Zayn’s bothered to send him in a month, from the realisation that public insults may be all that’s left of their friendship. He answers but doesn’t say anything, lets a moment’s silence hang.

“Someone from the label told me I had to apologise,” says Zayn, bitter edge to his voice like there had been all the time in February, but never aimed at Louis.

Louis scoffs, makes himself punch out the words. “Yeah, mate, real sincere. Cheers.” He can’t admit that he’s fucking heartbroken, that he never really thought Zayn would pick a side, or at least pick a side that wasn't his. So he has to be angry instead. He wants to hang up, but he can’t make himself, even after all of it.

There's a long pause, just the sound of Zayn’s breath, and then Zayn says, softer, “Why can't you ever just leave anything alone?” He sounds tired and almost actually sorry. “Why couldn't you just leave me be?”

“Didn't say a word about you,” Louis replies. “Just about your mate's shit taste in filters. If he's there to hear it, he should just leave them off next time. You're pretty enough in normal colours.”

“He's not here. It's just me.”

“That's a change then. Congratulations. I thought you were permanently up his arse.” And it's just a phrase, and a phrase he’s used plenty, but it's a poor choice now because he suddenly remembers Zayn fucking him and thinks he might cry. Again. Like he did in the hotel bathroom last night after he was done blustering and telling everyone who’d listen that he didn’t care.

If Zayn’s thinking about any of that, he doesn’t let on. “He's my friend,” Zayn says. “I used to think you were too.”

“Used to?” says Louis, voice cracking. “You were the one who left.”

“I left the band, mate,” snaps Zayn. “You didn't have to get into it with my mates over it. If you cared...”

Louis sees red. The words come to him quick and sharp. “Fuck you, _if I cared_. You didn't just leave the band. You fucking left me too. You left me and didn’t even look back. And then you expect me to just take it when your new fucking best friend goes round slagging us off all over twitter. That's absolutely fine with you. If I cared. God. You stupid selfish twat.”

Zayn's silent for so long Louis wonders if he's hung up.

He starts crying then, quietly, not so Zayn can hear, slow, hot tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. He curls his free hand into a tight fist, fingernails denting his own skin, and he's going to have to keep talking if Zayn won't. He can’t hang up first, and he can’t handle the silence. “Right, I'll tell them you said your ‘I'm sorry’, if anyone asks. Good boy. Well done. I’m sure the album’ll be a hit.”

“Yours too,” says Zayn.

Louis laughs hollowly. He can’t do this. He can’t. It hurts too much. “This is shit.” His chest bunches around a sob.

Zayn sighs. “You know I couldn’t stay.”

“I don’t mean that. Not everything is about the fucking band, mate.”

“Lou.”

Louis drops his head back against the wall with a satisfying thump. “Don’t. Don’t you fucking dare. You let him say all that shit about me and then you acted like you didn’t know why anyone was mad. Don’t act like you’ve got some sort of high ground.”

“You started it though. You got into it with him, and you didn’t need to. You could have just left me alone.”

Louis covers his mouth to stifle the sound he makes. “Not friends anymore,” he says quietly. “Right, I forgot. You don’t need to keep in touch with former co-workers, do you? Or people you used to fuck? We should have just gone our separate ways, sent Christmas cards, maybe.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“You said you wanted me to leave you alone. Well, you got it.” Louis ends the call before he can think twice about it. He’s shaking.

Zayn phones back immediately. “If you hang up this time, I’m going to let you,” he says. “But you can’t have the last word all the time.”

Louis closes his eyes and doesn’t say anything, just trying to get his breath under control.

“Why can’t you just leave my friends alone? Even if they hate the band, loads of people hate the band, or say they hate the band, and you let it be. If you want to be my friend, you need to let it be.”

“You gonna have this talk with him too, then? Tell him to lay off and stop stirring shit when there’s no need?”

“He hasn’t got 20 million twitter followers waiting to back him. Just hanging out with me has got him so much shit, and he’s taking it. If he needs to blow off steam sometimes, I can’t ask him not to.”

He sounds calm and sensible, but it’s all fucking wrong. It’s all fucking impossible. “If he’s your friend, you can.”

“He wasn’t right about your voice.”

“Oh, fuck off. It doesn’t help to tell me that now.”

“I haven’t got anything else to tell you, mate. If you want to be my friend, you’ll have to compromise.”

Louis’s never had to compromise to get Zayn’s attention, never had to work for it in the time they’ve known each other. He feels as though the ground has shifted out from under him in the last few months, a fall of pebbles that’s become a landslide. “Fine,” he says, defeated.

“Thanks,” says Zayn. He asks after Louis’s family, and Louis lets him make small talk for a minute, as though that will help clear the air. “I still love you, Lou,” Zayn tells him finally.

“Yeah,” Louis replies. “I should go. We’re going to the studio.”

“Alright. We’ll speak soon, though?”

“Sure. Bye, Zayn.”

“Bye, Lou.” Louis holds his phone between his hands for a long time, staring at it and knowing that everything’s still wrong, that even if he holds his tongue from now on, probably nothing’s going to make it right.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr [here](http://realmenwearpuppypants.tumblr.com/).


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